By Quintin Smith on February 15th, 2011 at 9:51 am.
American McGee’s Alice 2, aka Alice: Madness Returns has a new teaser out, which I spotted during my morning patrol of VG24/7. You can watch it below. Hurry! You’re late! You’re late, for a very important date! No time to say hello, good-bye! You’re late, you’re late, you’re late!
That’s what being a freelance journalist is like, you know. All the time.
Did you know the studio working on this (headed by McGee), Spicy Horse Studios, is based out of Shanghai? Did you know they also have a smaller studio working on iPhone games called Spicy Pony Studios? I’m not making this up!
I have quite fond memories of the original Alice. The terror of swimming away from bus-sized trout, some fun platforming, lots of surprises, and the motherloving blunderbuss! Did you guys find that? If memory serves if was off the beaten track so you might not have, but it was the only actual gun in the game and all you had to do was point it half-heartedly in the direction of an enemy and when you pulled the trigger /everything/ on-screen died. It was a thing of beauty.
15/02/2011 at 09:59 DonCaballero says:
+1 for the Tom Waits reference.
15/02/2011 at 11:28 dartt says:
I must be insane,
To go skating on your name,
And by tracing it twice,
I fell through the ice,
Of Alice.
15/02/2011 at 12:16 Jambe says:
+2 you are a man of good taste.
15/02/2011 at 16:03 Horza says:
+3, thanks for pressing the “play” button in my brain.
15/02/2011 at 17:18 Samuel Bass says:
+4
…and that’s my early morning listening squared away then.
15/02/2011 at 18:15 forddent says:
Welp, time to put on Alice again. There are worse fates.
16/02/2011 at 14:34 manveruppd says:
+5 and bonus virtual candy! :p
15/02/2011 at 10:22 JohnnyMaverik says:
This looks awesome, never played the original due to being young and ignorant of it’s existence at the time, and sadly it’s not available anywhere these days :’(
15/02/2011 at 12:58 StingingVelvet says:
Here in the states you can get a pretty cheap disc on ebay or amazon… I’ve seen them for $10 or so. If you want the whole box and such though it is of course more expensive.
15/02/2011 at 10:29 Thirith says:
I like the overall look, but I’m not too keen on Alice herself. I felt that the first game got her right in that she didn’t completely lose the cutesy thing, and that tension (cutesy vs. dark) was pretty nifty. This Alice is completely dark, she’s one with the world, and she’s got this weird anime thing going that I find prettyoverdone.
15/02/2011 at 11:42 Ogun says:
Aye, the original made her more of a character in her own right than this teaser suggests.
Haven’t all of McGee’s games sucked since Alice? I can’t remember any of them and when I try to then the part of my brain that protects me from humming old pop songs tells me not to bother.
15/02/2011 at 12:34 Nova says:
The strange thing is that they can’t seem to decide if Alice is young or old. Her body and face just don’t match. Her face looks much too old.
15/02/2011 at 10:32 skurmedel says:
When will there be an American McGee’s Paddington Bear game?
15/02/2011 at 13:16 Dr. Evanzan says:
@skurmedel
When there is, it will presumably be set in Deepest Darkest Peru.
15/02/2011 at 10:34 TheBlackBandit says:
I loved American McGee’s version of the Mad Hatter. Always struck me as a pretty amazing rendition.
15/02/2011 at 10:37 Bhazor says:
2011: The Year videogame characters tried to look serious whilst blood hilariously trickles down the bridge of their nose.
15/02/2011 at 10:51 Quintin Smith says:
Pretty sure that’s been every second of every year since 1981.
15/02/2011 at 10:45 Cael says:
When is a croquet mallet like a billy club?
15/02/2011 at 11:10 Jackablade says:
I’ll tell you. Whenever you want it to be.
15/02/2011 at 12:10 cytokindness says:
I’ve still heard nothing about the most important part of the game:
Is the original Cheshire Cat still in it?
“Those who say there’s nothing like a nice cup of tea for calming the nerves never had real tea. It’s like a syringe of adrenaline straight to the heart.”
15/02/2011 at 15:49 Bluepixie says:
And if not, there may be more then one way to skin a cat… if you’ll pardon the expression.
15/02/2011 at 20:18 phuzz says:
They’ve moved the county boundaries, he’s now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat.
(thanks Jasper Fforde)
15/02/2011 at 12:57 DestructibleEnvironments says:
The environment looks to be inspired by the Timothy Burton movie.
Smells like teen angst.
15/02/2011 at 15:12 Harvey says:
American McGee’s Alice came out in 2000, so if anything I’d say ol’ Timmy was influenced by the game. I thought I’d read something somewhere saying that the newest Alice in Wonderland movie was based on that game, but I may be making things up now.
15/02/2011 at 17:29 Samuel Bass says:
The game was licensed for a movie at some point, but that was long long ago. The movie seems to be based more on a hybrid of Lord of the Rings, neat concept art, cliched ideas and, well, really (REALLY) bad film-making. Tim Burton was a hero of mine since I was a pre-goth pre-teen, but he’s gotten really dull of late.
The game itself looks very much in line with the previous one…gothy surrealism ftw!
20/02/2011 at 17:09 dskzero says:
It actually does look a lot more colorful and less surrealist… or, rather, a wildly different kind of surrealism.
15/02/2011 at 17:28 ZIGS says:
Hopefully this will be better than Bad Day L.A
16/02/2011 at 09:28 Baggypants says:
Looking forwards to return to this joyfully insane world of killing and jumping. Unless it only has two weapon slots and a cover system. That would be insane indeed.
16/02/2011 at 18:36 Araxiel says:
Oh look, it’s how Tim Burton should have done it (And probably would have done if Hollywood wasn’t so good damn simple minded).
Shame I didn’t play the first game. When I saw it on the shelves I thought it looks quite…well…disgusting. I thought that it’s somekind of cheap, stupid, bad with cheap, stupid, bad graphics and cheap, stupid, bad, gameplay and a cheap, stupid, bad story…
…oh boy was I wrong.